Microsoft data center guru heads to Amazon

Microsoft data centers guru James Hamilton has left the company to join Amazon Web Services as vice president and distinguished engineer.

“James has a distinguished career designing and deploying systems that are secure and that scale reliably and cost-effectively. James will start putting his expertise to work for Amazon Web Services customers in January,” an Amazon spokeswoman said via e-mail on Friday.

Tech Hermit writes for The Digital Cave, “Microsoft has made a huge splash with its approach to containerization and radical approaches to running, building, and operating data centers. The world first experienced a sniff of this approach through the writings and presentations of James Hamilton, a key researcher from MS Research who is closely tied to the work being done by Michael Manos, Christian Belady, and Daniel Costello.”

A Microsoft research profile on Hamilton said that his job there was to “improve data center efficiency, speed of deployment, and reliability. “

The Channel Register notes that, “perhaps not coincidentally, this is happening at the same time as the local papers in Oregon are reporting that Amazon is looking to build a new data center near the cheap electricity generated by hydroelectric dams along the fast-moving Columbia River.”